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This is still a $100-130 premium over comparable USB 3 drives of the same capacity, which is just nuts. It's the same kind of markup Seagate charges (the thunderbolt goflex adapter goes for about $130).

This is silly: Apple has a thunderbolt ethernet adapter out for $29, which means the cost of the controller is below $29, and you can buy a card with a PCIe SATA controller for $15. Both of those would already have markup on them for the profit margin, so the premium for a thunderbolt external HDD should be LOWER than $44... Instead the premium is almost three times higher.Reply

You can see a tear down of the TBEA and Apple is not using Intel’s Thunderbolt-to-PCIe chipset. Instead, the Broadcom chip is directly connected to the Thunderbolt cable and it is just working as a cable transport layer. By design, the Thunderbolt "controller" is actually mapping one or more PCI-Express lanes directly over the cable, so that the MAC+PHY solution itself only needs speak PCI-Express and only requires the Thunderbolt PHY.

But as you can see on the second page of this review Buffalo has a quite a few chipsets imbeded into the PCB to make a workable dual port solution and that raises that raises the BOM costs. Seagate's solution has a similar situation with their solution.

You must be missing the part where that only applies to an SSD put in after the fact.With the stock drive which comes as part of the unit, the speeds are equal at around 115~120MB/s.There is no performance difference between this drive when used with Thunderbolt, and when used with USB3.

And if you're getting an SSD to put in an enclosure, the difference becomes the difference between an empty USB3 enclosure, and one of these, which means it's more like $170+, since you can get an empty USB3 eternal enclosure for around $30, while you can't get just a Thunderbolt enclosure, so you have to pay $200 for the 500GB drive.

As shipped, with a mechanical harddrive in it, this drive is identical in performance to a USB3 external enclosure with no Thunderbolt. And $110+ more expensive.Reply

And you must be missing (actually ignoring) the very simple original question: "What's the advantage of TB over USB3", which I don't see somehow applies to any one disk or peripheral, but rather is about the port ITSELF, so your insertion is completely irrelevant.

But I like how the question is quickly limited to "if you merely want to connect a single HDD", which makes it a nonsensically loaded question.

Simple: if you don't see the advantages for you... DON'T USE IT. Duuuuh...Reply

You seem to imply that his comments are not valid, but that is not true at all. He has extremely valid points. What use is a proprietary interface with monstrously expensive interconnects, controllers, almost no second suppliers and no performance, power consumption, ANY advantage whatsoever? You're just paying a hell of a lot more for nothing. It's a big design flaw on Apple's side that there is apparently no USB 3 on some of their products, because that interface is obviously far superior except for some niche applications. They can promote the niche applications, sure, just make sure you can also plug in more conventional stuff. That's what expandability is all about.Reply

It's not a loaded question.The drive has no passthrough, therefore you are ONLY able to connect a single harddrive.It's irrelevant what Thunderbolt can potentially do as a port, the port itself becomes totally irrelevant once you close it off by connecting this drive.

It doesn't matter if the port can do display connections, or anything else. Once you connect this particular drive, it can't, it can just access this drive.Which is exactly the same as a USB drive would be.

Yes, Thunderbolt has other uses, but none of them are relevant when you use a drive without passthrough. Unless you are connecting it to the other end of a Thunderbolt device which DOES have passthrough, you are simply using Thunderbolt in the exact same way you would use a USB3 port, meaning any port advantage whatsoever is nonexistent.

Which is also why I said "With THIS drive", meaning this specific drive, not Thunderbolt drives or devices in general.And I said "this drive" more than once, to try and make it clear I meant THIS drive.Reply

Of course you can see actual advantages of thunderbolt over usb3.0 only when you get into SSDs. Given the rate at which SSD prices are coming down, thunderbolt is definitely going to make a difference compared to usb3.0.

But if all you want to do is stick a single HDD, then you are right you wont see any difference using a thunderbolt or usb3.0. Other than the only added advantage of daisy chaining in thunderbolt.

But I would it is not a proper comparision. I mean usb3.0 was out since 3 years or atleast 2 years isnt it. It is now it is now that the usb3 devices have become reasonably affordable. Thunderbolt has hardly hit an year with much more advantages and speed. So it will take time for it to sink and it definitely will.

Consider it this way, no matter what disk you stick in it is upto you. Lets take a usb3.0 enclosure which according to you is $30. Right now the cheapest thunderbolt seagate goflex portable adapter is $99. Add the cost of thunderbolt cable $50. So, with that extra difference you are way above the speeds of usb3 and even if you use a 60gb or 120 gb SSD which you can get for below or at $100 you are ahead of the curve provided you have the need. Add the daisy chaining advantage to it.

So an extra premium of $120 only within a year of thunderbolts adoption. Within next 6-12 months you are gonna see more difference.Reply

The answer is obvious. You cannot compare an Intel QuickBench score to a Crystal Disk Mark score. There is not even a baseline of the Windows 7 NTFS over SATA6 to compare to USB 3.

Both interfaces are so much faster than the drive itself that neither should have a performance advantage. The advantage for TB is that it works with MB Pros that do not have a USB 3.0 port. The advantage for USB 3.0 is that it is cheaper, and where TB's future is still not 100%, USB 3 will certainly be ubiquitous.Reply

Am I missing something?$200 for a 500GB external HDD is not an "affordable price point" in my mind.The only thing it has is Thunderbolt, which doesn't provide a real benefit when it doesn't have passthrough (so AFAIK, if you plug this in, nothing else can be used).You can buy a USB3 1TB 2.5" drive for under $100 on Newegg. Less than half the price of this.The only thing you lose is Thunderbolt, but as your testing shows, the mechanical drive is the same speed over Thunderbolt or USB3, so there's no loss.

The only way you lose out is if you want to throw in an SSD, in which case the entire concept isn't affordable anyway, due to the price of the SSD on top of the enclosure.

Assuming that people do switch to externals for storage for music and video, you don't need a flash external, meaning USB3 provides more than enough speed, and assuming you buy a sensible computer, you will have more ports available anyway (and leave any Thunderbolt ports free for other stuff).

I don't understand how your conclusion can possibly be reached based on what is presented in the article. It makes zero sense. Maybe for a Thunderbolt device it's a good deal, but as a Thunderbolt device it doesn't even make sense, so there's no reason to buy it in the first place as a Thunderbolt device, thereby leaving it to compete with far cheaper USB3 devices.Reply

Because the previous gen MB Pros do not have a USB 3.0 port. TB is overkill for a hard drive, but the only other option for last gen MB Pro owners is USB 2.0 which drastically slows down even the hard drive.Reply

I use a lacie little big disk with 2 ssds in it. an easy mod. I put in 2x 256gb samsung ssds. I use it as an external boot drive for a mac mini and the internal slow 500gb oem is my backup easy peasy. 4 screws and the case is open.

I don't understand the use of a slow drive like the one in this case.Reply

Compare it to the USB2 numbers. It's a huge difference. This product is designed to fit well with Apple users where you can expect potential hosts to support Firewire, USB2, USB3 and/or Thunderbolt.

USB2 and Firewire is more or less the same, and USB3 has been with Apple for only a short while. So we have a situation where both TB and USB3 equipped Macs can expect superior speed while still being backward compatible with any Mac from the last century.

If choosing a USB3-only solution only a Mac only a handful of computers would support it (rMBP being the first) while TB was first included 18 months ago.

I'm not saying it's a perfect solution, but for the "right person" it's a solution superior to a pure USB3-interface.Reply

I have a 13 " MBP Early 2011 and I only have two options, thunderbolt or USB 2.0. These drives are awesome especially since they include the thunderbolt cable. Apple sells this cable for 50USD. These drives are great for me and my VM (VMs wreck consumer ssd's.)Reply

"Port Ridge is popping up in a lot of places, for good reason - it’s inexpensive, second generation, small, and has a low TDP."

Damn, our standards are pretty undemanding in this space, aren't they.IMHO .7W is massive --- let's recall that we expect a USB2 drive of this sort to run comfortably off 2.5W.

Of course this will fall in time, but until then let's not pretend a pig in lipstick is Cindy Crawford. .7W sucks, and we better hope Intel does better than reduce it by factor of 2 for the next rev.

[As a secondary issue, what's with this idiotic fad for no-pass-through drives? IF we lived in a world where TB hubs actually existed, it would make sense. But since these hubs don't appear to exist, and Buffalo, for example, is not filling the vacuum, creating a device of this form is just idiotic. The already minuscule pool of people willing to buy a device like this is mostly people who(a) have plenty of peripherals and(b) were burned the last time round by FW800, with its lack of hubs and its peripherals that all shipped with no pass through.

Honestly at this point I hope either Intel or Apple just do an MS Surface and say "screw 3rd part vendors. These people are so damn incompetent they're making our product look bad, and WTF cares if our competition bankrupts them --- they damn well deserve it}.]Reply

Setting this up as a passthrough-capable drive would increase the price (more expensive controller), increase the complexity of the circuit design and raise the TDP to at least 2.8w.That would make little sense for Buffalo, given the "already minuscule pool of people " you describe.

If and when TB has a more pervasive presence, I would expect to see pass-through designs. At this point, however, I'd say Buffalo's playing it smart.

The same holds true for the choice of hard drive. Not only are they the 1st to market with a relatively low cost TB external drive, but the drive choice means no external power is needed.If it proves to be popular, adding additional drive options, as well as just the enclosure, will be very easy.That's a win-win at this point in time.Reply

I have been wanting there to be a Thunderbolt SATA Enclosure for a while now. Reason being: On all the new MACs, I would be able to upgrade everyone's computers without cracking open their system, voiding their warranty, and all a lot faster, just by implanting an umbilical-ly connected SSD via Thunderbolt.

Opening the case does not void the warranty on most Macs, AFAIK. But if you are concerned, you can always take the test to become an Apple Certified Mac Technician. It's not terribly expensive to do, and then you don't have to worry at all.Reply

Why are the sequential and some of the random read/writes slower on USB 3.0?? I would assume neither of the interfaces are being saturated by even the SSD. Is it more a OSX/Win 7 Issue?? I was expecting them to be more or less the sameReply

Because USB 3.0 isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's already too slow to handle the data that a modern SATA III SSD can throw at it, let alone a multi-SSD RAID. This is where Thunderbolt really shines.Reply

There is just absolutely no point to this product. It is freakishly expensive for what it does in what has become a commodity market. The design decisions that make it expensive are idiotic. Thunderbolt is a couple tens of percent faster than USB 3, but this drive doesn't even come close to saturating any interface. There is just no point.

Also, it is clearly not aimed at disassembling and putting something inside that actually does benefit from the TB interface. It's cumbersome to disassemble and the device is (at least optically) internally damaged when doing so.

Who the hell thought of this and more importantly: why could Anandtech ever say it is 'an affordable price point'? Yes, it is affordable compared to a TB-carrying computer, but it's way too expensive to even consider when buying external storage (and after all, this is nothing more than external storage). It's more expensive than equally performing *wireless* hard drives! It's more expensive than buying a TB to USB 3.0 cable and any other commodity external hard drive. It's more expensive than buying a low-end NAS!

Okay seagate's t-bolt adapter is 99 the cable is 50 and a usb 3 adapter is 20 so 169 gives you the ability to use 2 drives since you have a pair of adapters . so for 169 I have an endless choice of drives and the ability to use 2 of them.

Of course I need to pay for drives.

this way I have a case with a slow 500gb hdd . And I have 2 ways to connect it. seems to me a lot of people would go for the seagate choice over this.Reply

What driver and transfer mode was used for the USB 3.0 tests? Were you using the Windows 7 driver? The numbers would seem to indicate BOT was being used. If so, was the maximum payload size the default 64 KB? Does this device support UASP?

This product really does seem to fall pretty far off of the price/performance curve. Surprisingly, there are some Thunderbolt products that aren't bad at all when you plot the cost per GB versus straight-line speed. Notably, the Western Digital My Book Thunderbolt Duo 6TB which Newegg was listing for $579.99 the other day (10.5¢/GB for 240MB/s speeds), and the Promise Pegasus R6 12TB which offers insane speeds, flexibility and good construction for less than 20 cents per GB.

This is yet another product that can only be rationalized for use with a 2011 model Mac. Every other PC with Thunderbolt also has USB 3.0, so why would you pay a premium for Thunderbolt in this case? The USB 3.0 only version of this drive is only $89.99 on Newegg right now. That's a $140 or 155% price increase for a feature that would only pay dividends on a 2011 Mac.Reply

You don't understand. The beauty of Thunderbolt is that it is completely 'native'. Connecting a Thunderbolt drive is like connecting the drive directly to a SATA port on the motherboard. Or, in the case of a multi-bay RAID like the Pegasus it's like connecting to a hardware RAID card in to a PCIe slot. All over a single cable with no decrease in speed or added latency!Reply

That seems like it could have some neat usage scenarios then. Seems a little pricey for a simple external hard drive though, as now you'd need a separate controller in the portable unit, whereas with eSATA you are using the controller you already have on your machine.Reply

Still think I would have prefered a further development of the Expresscard standard shrinking its size and making more PCIe lanes directly available, rather than the development of something new requiring new changes to operating systems and drivers to ensure compatibility.

I wonder how long until Thunderbolt is properly supported under Linux.

Even better -- since Thunderbolt looks like PCIe to the host OS, most devices just work, even under legacy OSes that were released before Thunderbolt. As long as their was already a device driver available for whatever PCIe chip is in the device, it should just work. The only thing that might not work right away is hotswap support. Since Thunderbolt devices can be plugged in and removed at any time while most machines treat PCIe as only swappable between reboots, you might have to reboot your machine if it's running an older OS.

Thunderbolt and ExpressCard have more in common that you think -- both appear to the host OS as PCIe devices for the most part.

Also -- how is Thunderbolt any more proprietary than anything else? It's currently only offered by Intel, but I suspect we'll see more vendors offering chips at some point soon. Most are probably taking a wait and see approach.Reply

I assume it´s possible to boot from this TB drive to OS X.How about booting to Win7 or Win 8. As far as I recollect, this has not been possible in the past with Firewire Drives. Does it work with TB now?

It would depend on if the BIOS supported it or not. Since a drive connected up via TB looks like another SATA drive connected to a PCIe bridge, the OS shouldn't care. But if the BIOS doesn't even look for bootable drives on SATA ports that aren't on the motherboard, it won't matter.

I think, but haven't verified myself, that any Apple machine with TB can boot Windows over TB. Reply

The cables are active, however, and have several small chips in each connector which help compensate for various signaling issues. This allows the use of thinner, more flexible, stranded conductors and can lower overall power consumption. Active cables are fairly common at signaling rates of 10.3125 GBaud.

Everyone seems to think Thunderbolt cables are expensive because they are active, but even passive twinax cables that can handle 2x 10 Gbps channels are pretty pricey.Reply

I was tickled pink when I popped a M4 into a $10 OKGEAR USB 3.0 case. Amazing how cheap things have become. That OKGEAR case certainly makes the MiniStation look a tad pricey but price is not the only factor I go by.

I bought the 1TB as soon as I finished the review. My 11" MBA has just 2 USB 3.0 ports so it will be nice to be able to connect a third drive. I can also connect it to the Thunderbolt port on my P8Z77-V PREMIUM.Reply

Well, I can seemingly answer this question. I have tried 2 separate Crucial M4 512GB SSDs. and they have both crapped out spectacularly.

They initially format and work for a very short period of time. After which, the drives begin to disconnect after around 3 to 4 GB of sustained transfer. These disconnects happen reliably for a while and then the drive refuses to mount.

Attempting to re-initialize the drives will fail with a 'cannot write to last block' error in Mountain Lion. The drives are, for all intents and purposes; hosed.

I thought the first time this happened I had a faulty SSD. Then it happened with the next drive.

So I would say, based on my experience, that you should stay away from 512 GB SSDs, unless you want to run the risk of a $350 to $400 mistake.Reply

I use a Logitech Anywhere mouse with one of those USB Unifying receiver always plugged into one port.That leaves me only a single USB port for other stuff. When i backup this external drive to another external drive, then i need to unplug the Unifying receiver.. Not the end of the world, i would like to be able to carry on without that extra step.

I would like to be able to use my currently always empty TB ports for something... moving my external USB disk over to TB is idea.. Even if the TB Ministation isn't running at full TB speeds, that is okay because it is still way faster than USB 2.0.

On point is that i think it would've been ideal if this Ministation was designed to be easily opened.. It would definitely make it more appealing for the power user that might want to swap out for a larger capacity or SSD..

For those just wanting the ministation just for the interface, one could easily sell the hard disk on ebay for a few bucks.. or simply put it into a USB 3.0 enclosure and use it for backups.. one could never have too many usb disks!Reply